Really?! All it takes for anyone to know Americans have serious body image issues is to hear men interviewed by The Five’s Andrea Tarantino describe Kate Upton as a duff. Duff is a new term I just learned and it means designated ugly fat friend. Nice (sarcasm here). Hearing crap like that just makes me cranky. I only wish I was so fat.

During the same segment it was mentioned there are web sites dedicated to help women become anorexic, called pro anorexia sites. One of these sites slammed Kate Upton for being 30 pounds overweight making the subject a hot topic in the last week or so. Read more here.

Update: Since I first wrote this post, the pro anorexia blog has walked their comments back some. Kate Upton has also came out and said I like who I am and I not making myself miserable by not eating. You go, Kate!

The pro anorexia site is obscene but their skewed viewpoint makes sense coming from where it does. What I don’t get is the two random men in NYC agreeing they thought Kate Upton is too fat. It makes me wonder about the women in these men’s lives. Do they starve and harm their bodies to be just the right size for these guys? What they ought to say is kiss my big fat…duff. Lol. I have to wonder why we do these things to ourselves.

Do women base our body image too much on what some men or even other women think or want? Or maybe it’s the photo shopping of celebs that cause the problems with body image. This is going to sound naive but I really thought Kate Middleton’s waist was that tiny or some of these women who just had babies looked like they hadn’t even been pregnant on the cover of People or other magazines two weeks out. Recent articles have outed these photos but how much harm has been done over the years and still does? More here and here.

Someone, somewhere, decided that America could not accept what real man or women look like. Worse, we let them decide for us. Women are by far judged on their appearance than men although I do believe men are beginning to get the same scrutiny.

I’m no anthropologist but it seems to me our culture has become a bit off kilter. Take writing for instance. Writers are told to have their character’s features and personality as flawed so they’ll be interesting but we do not want those same flaws to show in our celebs or ourselves. There’s something wrong with us that we can no longer accept imperfection in the real world but find it acceptable in our art or fantasies (or at least some of our art). It seems to indicate an inability to cope with reality on our part, doesn’t it? I don’t know about you but that kinda scares me.

The photos on and in those magazines are generic in looks and poses. Oh, you might get the occasional tat, piercing or pink spiky hair but underneath the body art there lurks the same perfect blandness. We have become a nation of cardboard cutouts in many ways. I keep thinking of that old Twilight Zone episode, Number 12 Looks Just Like You, where a young woman is forced to have surgery to make her look beautiful like everyone else. She just wanted to be herself. Sometimes I feel a bit paranoid the writer of that episode was a little too prescient in many ways.

I’m at the point in my life all I want is to hang around a bit longer and feel good while I do it. Each person should be true to themselves and decide on what lifestyle best suits his or her own needs. Not by some cookie cutter model, tv or film star whose strings are being pulled by some godlike wannabe puppet master or whoever else wants you to fit into their idea of perfection that looks just like everyone else.

No weight loss this week. I’m just holding my own at this point for which I’m grateful although I would like that freaking needle to move a little to the left eventually. Ahem. Please? 🙂